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LAN & WAN Reviews

Traffic Control

There are five means of controlling traffic on the ES-2026. First, every port on the switch can have a rate limit applied to traffic coming into or leaving the switch. Rate limits can be set anywhere from 64 Kbps to 100 Mbps.

I tested this feature using iperf to send traffic streams between ports. With no rate limit, I could pass traffic between two ports at 93 Mbps, which is pretty close to the 100 Mbps port speed. However, if I set an inbound port limit, my speeds were much lower than expected, indicating the rate limit slowed performance more than its setting.

For example, I set an inbound rate limit of 50,000 Kbps (50Mbps) shown in Figure 11.

Figure 11: Rate limiting configuration

I would have expected my iperf test to return about 40-50 Mbps. But instead, my test showed a speed of 1.52 Mbps, as shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12: Rate limiting throughput check

As usual, I ran iperf using default TCP settings, with a TCP window size of 8KB and no other options. Running an iperf throughput test between two PCs to test throughput requires the command iperf -s on one PC and and iperf -c (ip) on the other PC.

I tried a few different combinations of rate limits on the ES-2026. Each time I applied a rate limit, the resulting speeds on the configured port dropped significantly more than the applied limit. I reported the issue to LG and they are looking into it.

Update 1/13/2011

According to LG, TCP traffic rate limiting will only work with an output rate limit. This is due to the architecture of the switch, as there is no buffer on the switch ingress to store and forward the traffic at the lower rate. However, once traffic has entered the switch fabric, it can buffer the traffic, thus an output rate limit can be effective on TCP traffic. Further, LG said that rate limits applied to UDP traffic should work on both inbound and outbound traffic, since retransmission isn't required for UDP traffic.

I was able to verify both claims. I set an outbound rate limit of 50 Mbps and saw my TCP throughput capped at 54.6 Mbps. I set an inbound rate limit of 50 Mbps, configured iperf to pass UDP traffic and saw my UDP throughput capped at 48.0 Mbps.

A second method of traffic control is storm control. Storm control can be applied to each port to limit the amount of bandwidth consumed by unicast, multicast, or broadcast traffic. This could be useful to control misbehaving devices by applying a broadcast bandwidth limit per port.

A third method of traffic control is by prioritization. The ES-2026 supports defining Class of Service (CoS) values by port, and traffic controls based using strict and weighted round-robin queuing. Traffic marking and prioritization can be applied via Differentiated Service Code Point (DSCP) values, CoS values, Per Hop Behavior (PHB) values, and egress queues.

A fourth method of traffic control is via classes and policies. This involves setting up a class-matching rule based on traffic characteristics such IP addresses, DSCP values, Precedence values, or VLAN IDs. Once the desired traffic is matched based on the traffic characteristics, bandwidth limits can be set for that traffic in a policy. The policy is then applied to an interface to implement the traffic control.

The last method of traffic control is for VoIP traffic. The ES-2026 allows for assigning devices to a Voice VLAN based on device MAC address or by Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP). I attempted to test this feature by MAC address, but kept getting a Data is invalid error message when I applied my configuration (Figure 13). Again, I reported the issue to LG and they are looking into it.

Update 1/13/2011

LG acknowledged there is a gap in the instructions. There are three port modes on the ES-2026: Access (default), Hybrid, and Trunk. Access is for untagged frames, Hybrid is for untagged or tagged frames, and Trunk mode is for tagged frames. Apparently, auto Voice VLAN functionality requires the ports connected to the VOIP device are set in Hybrid mode instead of Access mode.

Sure enough, once I set the port to Hybrid mode, the auto Voice VLAN functionality worked. My VOIP device was correctly detected and its port was automatically assigned to the Voice VLAN. LG informed me they are likely going to change the default mode on all ports on the ES-2026 to Hybrid mode in a future firmware release.

Figure 13: VoIP configuration error

Security

The ES-2026 has many security options. Management access to the switch can be authenticated locally or via a RADIUS or TACACS+ server. The switch also supports HTTP or HTTPS access to its web interface.

Up to 64 Access Control Lists (ACLs) can be defined for filtering traffic. ACL construction is very similar to Cisco IOS ACL construction and both standard and extended ACLs can be configured for controlling specific traffic. A standard ACL can filter traffic based on source IP, where an extended ACL can filter traffic based on source or destination IP, as well as source or destination ports. ACLs on the ES-2026 can also be configured based on MAC address.

Finally, the switch can control which and how many devices can access the network based on ports and MAC address. Options for port security include the ability to statically define which MAC addresses can access which port, how many MAC addresses are permitted per port, and using an external authentication server based on the 802.1x standard.

Other Features

The ES-2026 has a nice feature called Green Ethernet, which LG advertises as an “environmentally friendly design for power saving via link connection and cable length.” However, the manual points out this feature “only works when connection speed is 1 Gbps, and line length is less than 60 meters.”

I'm testing the ES-2026, which has 24 Fast Ethernet ports and only 2 Gigabit ports. I noticed the Green Ethernet feature was enabled on both the Gigabit ports, but I can't imagine it is going to provide much power saving on just two ports. It would be nice if this feature worked on all 26 ports of the switch.

A feature I like to use on a switch is port mirroring. It is very useful for troubleshooting and monitoring network traffic. Port mirroring is a means to copy the traffic going to and from one port to another port.

Configuring port mirroring on the ES-2026 takes only a couple of clicks. Just select the port you wish to mirror and the port to view the traffic, typically the port you have your workstation or remote monitoring device (RMON). Figure 14 shows I've set up the switch to copy traffic from port 25 to port 5. I used Wireshark on my laptop on port 5 to see traffic from the PC connected to port 25.

Figure 14: Port mirroring

For Reporting, both the port and trunk menus provide statistical and graphical displays of traffic. Figure 15 shows a simple chart of traffic on one of the active ports on the ES-2026. The chart shows that the port is primarily sending and receiving unicast traffic, which would be expected for a PC used for typical web surfing and email.

Figure 15: Port traffic chart

Closing Thoughts

The ES-2026 falls in the middle of the smart switch category. I looked at NETGEAR's GS724TR smart switch awhile back The GS724TR is a bit smarter than the ES-2026, with a few more features such as inter-VLAN routing. But it also carries a much higher price tag ($568).

The ES-2026 is more comparable in features to the NETGEAR FS6726T and Cisco SLM224G. Table 2 shows a simple comparison among the three. As you can see, the ES-2026 is much more expensive than the other two products for essentially the same feature set. The ES-2026 isn't widely available yet, so I used Amazon to price all three products (price shown includes shipping).

Table 2: Competitive comparison

The other factor weighing against the ES-2026 is warranty. Both the NETGEAR and Cisco come with limited lifetime warranties, while the ES-2026 is warranteed for only two years. Since most business-grade switches now include lifetime warranties, LG-Ericsson will need to also offer this if they hope to win market share.

On a more positive note, I'm hopeful for the ES-2026's reliability since it never crashed or hung during my testing. LG-Ericsson's data sheet rates the Mean Time Between Failures on the device at 560,000 hours, which is pretty impressive if true. 560,000 hours equates to 63.9 years! (I wonder where networking will be in 63.9 years?)

I am concerned, however, about some of the options, such as the rate limiting accuracy and the Voice VLAN feature. I hope LG-Ericsson will be coming out with a firmware update to address these issues.

In all, the ES-2026's configuration is intuitive, its silent and stable, and VLAN configuration was quick and easy. But I'd say a firmware update, price reduction and lifetime warranty will be needed to get it into the game against much more established names.